It is daunting to setup a new business from scratch. I thought I’d fire off a few items that I give my clients to account for in the strategic planning of their new start-up. Some may seem logical but many are often overlooked.

First Steps

• Choose a really, really good name for your business
• Do a name search of your new sole proprietorship or corporation (in BC its around $40)
• Once you’ve searched your business name, Register it (around $40)
• If you have a partnership, incorporate and setup shares for each partner Read the rest of this entry

I’m taking a course in Kelowna with Community Futures, on Leadership. Sounds relatively straight forward until you compare management to leadership, compare manager to a leader more specifically.

A manager is someone who operationally directs or conducts the business of an organization. I see this as a technical role, a part of a system, measurable and as my Leadership instructor, Anita Bakker, today pointed out, a ‘doer’.  A manager establishes a plan, allocates resources and measures the results to monitor the success or failure of the plan. A manager relies on other people to fulfill and execute his plan.

Enter the LEADER! Read the rest of this entry

I was talking with my wife last night about being an entrepreneur. She’s glad I have the entrepreneurial spirit because she feels it isn’t for the weak of heart and at the least is a daunting challenge.  My wife, Jo Ann is a woman with good ideas, an exceptionally strong work ethic (starting her working career as a young teenager) and with a strong desire to get ahead,  she is a natural to be an entrepreneur but…

It’s scary and certainly a slippery slope being an entrepreneur wannabe. Many entrepreneurs become one out of necessity, being laid off from a long held job usually from an economic downturn making a job redundant, an immigrant unable to find employment suitable to his qualifications, a youth out of university unable to find a job. Read the rest of this entry

A nice woman from New Jersey recently sent me an email from Twitter asking me how to enter the Management Consultant business right out of school. I thought I would put my answer to her here.

Hi Katrina

Whew you ask a lot, lol. I’m not sure I can answer many of your questions. My experience is that a good management consultant needs to have a variety of experience to draw upon in a general way. I guess a good mgmt consultant would have the business/educational credentials, had run several businesses and has a strong desire to pass the knowledge onto others. Read the rest of this entry

So you need help! The business you started last year is suddenly falling behind in revenues, the economy sucks and you don’t know what to do. Your buddy has a similar yet different problem keeping him awake at night. He has fulfillment issues and can’t fill orders fast enough creating backlogs, unhappy customers and more. Both have problems – where do you go for help? Read the rest of this entry